


I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine

by Queerapika



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queerapika/pseuds/Queerapika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short stories inspired by Kurapiika's android AU.</p><p>Kurapika is an android built by Leorio, who never does as they are told. Leorio is annoyed beyond compare to be sassed off by a bot that doesn't even have a personality core, but doesn't have the heart to take them apart either, so he's stuck with very rude company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Assembling

Leorio knew that when Zepile knocked on his door, carrying two laptops under his right arm and a mess of cables under the left one, he was either very fucked or very blessed. Zepile didn't even bother with a 'hi', nor did he give Leorio the chance to slam the door right in his face, he weaseled right past his friend, saying: “I found out the model of your head, where is it?”

Aside from being creepy, the words _'your head'_ were highly inaccurate. First of all, the head in question was of unknown origin, and as long as he didn't know for sure that no previous owner was looking for it, Leorio would be damn stupid to consider it his possession. Gon had brought it to him two days ago, saying he'd found it in a trash bin – and while Gon was a good kid who would never lie (without a good reason, that was), it was a sad fact that you didn't find perfectly good android pieces just lying around in the trash. Second, it was more than just a head, the framework of the torso was still intact, if stripped off rubber skin and empty.

“It's on the fridge. Why?”

“I need to run a few tests.”

A few tests usually meant that Zepile would stay for hours, drinking his beer and using up the bit of workspace that Leorio had that wasn't already covered in cogs, pistons and wires. This time he wouldn't mind because there was nothing else to work on and because he ran out of beer anyway, so he watched his friend set up the laptops and connect them to the wires that hung out of the android's neck. Leorio would have lent a hand, but when it came to robotics, his expertise was limited to limbs. He was an inventor, yes, but specialized on prostheses. Humanoid robots were out of his league.

To pass the time, he braided the android's long blond hair. It felt soft and very real. Damn, it probably was.

“Been a real pain in the ass to figure out the model without a serial number, you know,” Zepile said. Rows of green text flashed on his screens as he hacked into the bot's programming. “I thought it was a love bot at first, but their throats are built differently, you know, to catch up the-”

“What kind is it then?”, Leorio interrupted, because he really didn't want to hear about the anatomy of rich people's favorite sex puppets. A love bot was a perfect example of wasting good machinery for the lowest cause; their existence was a perverse insult to anyone who cared about robotics.

“It's a Kurta.”

“A what?”

“A maid bot. Kurta Customs was a small independent company who specialized on building high quality household assistants. They worked exclusively on demand, and promised an android that was 100 % tailored to the customers needs: looks, a.i., personality traits... I'm not surprised you never heard of them, their clientele was far out of our reach. ”

“You said 'was'. What happened to the company?”, Leorio wanted to know.

“The Phantom Troupe burned the place down a year ago.”

“I thought the Troupe was a bunch of thieves.”

“They are. There's a good chance that your blond princess here was part of their loot. Look here.” Zepile pointed at a piece of code. “That's the imprint log. The company's website states that the bots only take orders from someone who is imprinted as their master. The log is empty, so it hasn't been imprinted on anyone yet. Which means you don't have to worry about previous owners.”

“What if the log's data had just been erased?”, Leorio asked. Not that he didn't trust Zepile's judgment, but he couldn't afford being caught with stolen goods, his job depended on his good reputation and he needed that job, he had a family to feed.

“Possible, but unlikely. Even if you just delete the log, if the bot had a former master, it will have gathered data about them. I can't find any. In fact-” Zepile kept scrolling. “There's a basic a.i. but I can't find any personality programs either. Looks like this one was stolen long before it was completed. Shit. That lowers the market price a lot.”

“Who says I'm gonna sell it?”

Zepile turned to Leorio and his bull-horn-shaped eyebrows rose simultaneously to his 'I call bullshit' expression. “What do you want with an android head?”

Gon's expression had been one of pure joy when he brought the piece. _'You can fix it, right?'_ , the kid had asked.Gon looked every bit his father, but the smile – the sort of smile that could outshine the sun – he had from his mother. This smile was the only clear memory Leorio still had of her, of his aunt. He could never say no to Gon.

He wiped his hands on his pants. “Mito could use a helper in the household.”

Zepile sneered. “Mate, you know shit all about androids.”

“Which is exactly why you're going to help me.”

 

Anatomy was the most critical part. That was, unless you wanted your android to look like Steinfranken's monster. Judging by the bot's very lifelike and rather feminine features it was supposed to resemble an older teenager; the torso's framework was meant for a lean physique, which according to Zepile was common among maid bots. One wouldn't want one's household helper to take up much space. Based on the shape that the android was supposed to have, Zepile showed Leorio how to look up the right proportions using a database for artists and helped him transfer everything into a simulation software.

Weight was another critical factor. “You have to build them lighter than humans, you know,” Zepile would say, “the heavier the bot, the bigger the engine that you'll need to keep it going. And you only have so much space in their little chest.”

(Neither of them could pinpoint the exact moment when 'it' had become 'them'.)

Leorio spent every bit of spare time that he had on putting the maid bot together, which involved countless trips to the scrap dumpster. He took Gon with him, because his little cousin had a keen eye and a look for details – if you were about to look for a needle in a needlestack, this kid was the one you wanted by your side.

Two months passed.

Two months of grease and sweat and heated arguments with Mito because the additional workload meant he was even less help in the house; two months of intervals of sleeping in the workshop due to said arguments. Every little success seemed to be followed by a failure, but after those goddamn two months Leorio thought they had it. He was so convinced that he engaged in little christening rites – he thought of a name for his bot and asked Mito to cut their hair. _His_ hair. Leorio had decided to keep the android's design a little more on the male side. Female looking androids got stolen more often, and not just because there were a bunch of creeps who developed a weird fetish for robotic wives.

 

“Are you ready?”

Leorio was more than ready, although it made him nervous to have Mito's critical eyes on him. And on his work. Not to mention the chaos that was his workshop. Mito always looked so out of place here, too neat, too clean. He should have cleaned up before inviting the rest of the family. Gon wasn't bothered by the lack of cleanliness at all, he had dragged a box close to the bench for him and Mito to sit on and slammed his heels against the wood cheerfully, looking as if he might burst from anticipation.

They had propped up the android in a sitting position next to the workbench where Zepile had built up all his computers; cables snaked their way between laptops and the hidden plugs behind the bot's ear. The final result was a real piece of beauty with a hull of steel over duralumin bones and glass fiber wires. The chest was covered by a plexiglass panel, allowing insight on the workings of the motor and the pumps of the cooling system without needing to open him. The head looked a bit mismatched from the rest of the body, because the artificial skin only reached down to the collar line; everything else was metal, shimmering with an ember gleam from the anti-corrosion varnish they had applied.

“Alright, start him up.”

Zepile's hands flew over the keyboard and the android opened his eyes, the apertures that served as retinas glowing bright red. Zepile's laptop screen displayed the visual input of the bot's cameras. “You need to be on eye level with him for the imprinting. Oh, and you better take off the glasses.”

Leorio needed to go on his knees for that. A simple thing he'd done countless time without thinking much about it, but now that all eyes were on him, navigating his limbs in a manner that would not lead to potential embarrassment had become a hundred times more difficult. _'So this is how proposing feels like'_ , Leorio thought, tucking his glasses on the dirty collar of his work shirt.

On the screen one could watch his face being captured by the imprinting program, setting biometric markers, asking for confirmation. The progress took less than a minute and once it finished its run, the apertures stopped glowing.

“Can we talk to him now?”, Gon asked eagerly.

Zepile shook his head. “Not yet, I just made sure he recognizes Leorio. He's still in stand-by. Gimme a sec.” Little by little, the android showed simple signs of life. A twitching steel finger, a short blink. Then, the head moved, gray lenses focusing on Leorio.

“Try to say something to him,” Zepile suggested.

“And what?”

Gon clapped his hands. “How about you just say hi?”

“O-kay?” Leorio cleared his throat. “Hello, I'm Leorio.”

A soft whirring emanated from the head, then the android responded: “Hello, master.” His voice was the voice of a sleepwalker, slow and neutral, devoid of any emotions. Zepile hadn't bothered to fix the problem of the missing personality core, insisting they wouldn't need it.

“Your name is Pietro,” Leorio tried. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Mito shift uncomfortably.

The android blinked. And said “no”.

(It was the first of many.)

“What?”, Gon and Leorio spoke in unison.

“My name is not Pietro.”

“Well, yes it is, because I tell you so. That was an order, not a question.”

“Negative. You don't have the permission to alter this data, master.”

Leorio looked to Zepile, who shrugged. “Maybe they come with pre-installed names as some sort of theft protection?”

Gon hopped off his box and went to his cousin, patting Leorio's broad shoulder. “That's okay for you, isn't it? You're not very disappointed, are you?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. He was okay. Would be. In a minute.

“You're lying,” the android pointed out. “Your body language shows that you expected a different outcome.”

“Oh, shut up.”

At least this order he knew how to follow. Leorio wondered if the purpose of a personality core was to keep a robot from sounding like a condescending asshole every time they spoke.

“What are we supposed to call you then?”, Gon wanted to know, but received no reply.

Leorio sighed. “You can stop shutting up now and answer Gon's question.”

“You are supposed to call me by my name.”

“What _is_ your name?”, the boy tried again, with more patience than Leorio would have spared for the bot. He couldn't shake the feeling that they were being sassed off, which was impossible. In the end, an android was nothing more than a very fancy computer, so of course he was bound to take their orders literal. That could be a real problem; Leorio wasn't used to watch his mouth around others.

“My name is Kurapika.”

“Kurapika, are you a boy or a girl?”, Leorio asked, because who knew what else they had programmed in this blond head.

“Boy and girl are binary gendered terms. Gender is a concept of human society; I am not human, therefore this concept does not apply to me.”

“Um,” Zepile said, “that's not quite right. Most androids have a gender feature in addition to their personality core, so they are programmed to identify as one or the other. Looks like Kurapika is lacking this too.”

“I am not lacking anything,” Kurapika corrected, pronouncing every word with accuracy, like he had taken deep offense. “All my systems run without failure.”

Leorio agreed silently, scratching the spot underneath his ear. “You don't insist on being addressed with a certain pronoun, then?”

“I don't understand. The correct pronoun to address someone is 'you', master. You should know, you keep using it.”

“I mean, when we refer to you. If I were to speak of you as a 'he' when I introduce you to people, would you disagree?”

There was a pause and the whirring inside the android's head grew a little bit louder.

“Did they crash?”, Mito asked softly, speaking up for the first time since she had entered the workshop.

“I am calculating. Please wait,” Kurapika said. And then: “Negative. Since I do not have a gender, referring to me as 'he' or 'she' is equally wrong. However I cannot disagree. I am not human: I do not choose, I do not prefer. I can suggest a list of non-gendered pronouns in multiple languages if needed. Master, may I ask a question?”

“Sure, Kurapika.”

The android looked down on their new body, closing and opening their hands to fists, wiggling toe-less feet.

“Why am I naked?”


	2. Learning is a mutual progress

Leorio's relationship to cats was complicated.

They were ever present in the little coastal town that he lived in and most regarded them a pest not different than the seagulls. When he turned fourteen, he started to help out in the same fish shop where Mito worked and just like the stench would cling to his skin for hours, stray cats would follow him wherever he went. They were persistent, but kept their distance and only made noise if he stopped to stare back at them. Once he made the mistake to pet one of them – a beautiful animal with a mottled fur the color of sand and clay and striking blue eyes – and it followed him home.

Problem was, that cat was an asshole. Prone to just knock over glasses and mugs that stood a little too close to the edge of the table and then look at the mess and its involuntary owner with an air of indifference. After a year of feline tyranny, Zepile offered to adopt the tom and somehow transformed it into a fat loaf of lethargy.

 

Dealing with Kurapika was a lot like dealing with an asshole cat.

They took the world in with big eyes and a face that gave nothing away (and it was still very hard for Leorio to grasp that there was nothing to give away in the first place because the curve of their cheekbones and the slight asymmetry of their slender nose said _human_ ) and no matter what Zepile said that they could or could not do – they were _curious_ , their urge to consume every bit of knowledge they could get was proof of that. You also couldn’t leave them alone for a minute because once you turned your back on them, something would break or crack.

Granted, the last thing was kind of his fault.

He had built Kurapika’s limbs as strong as the prostheses for his human customers… which turned out to be far stronger than their original ones. They seemed to have no problem with controlling their legs or the movement of the arms, but when it came to _grabbing_ items, well.

Recalibration was in order. But what to use?

On a lazy Saturday afternoon, while Mito was out and meeting up with her bridge club, Leorio withdrew in his room and spent hours on research on pressure resistance of cheap household items. Recalibrations required a large amount of data, the sort that wasn’t printed on the package of a store-bought item.

Groaning, Leorio rubbed his eyes. He contemplated if fixing the problem on the hardware level would cost him less time – but the chances of decreasing Kurapika’s strength to the exact amount that the android was programmed for were slim – in a worst case scenario he’d overshoot and was left with a maid bot who couldn’t even pick up a spoon.

His musings were interrupted by the sound of a small explosion.

Leorio shot out of his chair so fast that he toppled it over and he ran down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. The kitchen. The sound had come from the kitchen and he could hear Gon say “uh-oh”. The last time he heard Gon say ‘uh-oh’, was when the kid was bedridden by the stomach flu and threw up on his own pillow by accident.

This sound did not accompany good news.

 

“I apologize,” Kurapika said as soon as Leorio stumbled into the kitchen. That was one of the first things he taught them: to apologize when they messed up. He had heard those words so often the last few days, following the perishing of Mito’s ceramic ware, that they felt like mockery by now.

“Oh no, you didn’t-”, he growled.

“It was my fault!”, Gon hurried to say and as he turned to his cousin, arms outstretched in a defensive way, milk was splashing under his shoes. “I was just trying to make pudding and I thought that cardboard boxes don’t break that easily, so I asked Kurapika to help me and-”

“The box burst,” Kurapika stated, calm as ever, still holding up the sad, empty cardboard hull.

“Why did you agree to help in the first place? You refuse to follow anyone else’s orders.”

(On occasion, Kurapika would even decline Leorio’s orders, claiming they would go against their programming. He hadn’t found a pattern behind that yet.)

“You told me to make myself useful, master.”

“I did? When?”

“Three hours and twenty one minutes ago, when you retreated to your bedroom.”

That may be true; Leorio didn't remember anymore. If- _when_ he said it, it hadn't been meant as an order, but Kurapika would not be able to differentiate. Leorio scratched the back of his head.

The milk pooled on the kitchen floor in a huge puddle, soaking Gon's and Kurapika's shoes.

“Get out of that mess, Kurapika, I'm really not in the mood to clean you, too. If we don't mop it up quick, it's gonna seep into the wood and start to smell bad in a few days and Mito's going to kill me when-”

Kurapika _clacked_.

The sound of it made Gon's and Leorio's flinch with discomfort. Kurapika moved swiftly; their hand clamped around Leorio's wrist as the android all but hurried him out of the kitchen.

“We must tell the police.”

“The police? Kurapika, would you stop for a second? Spilling milk is not that much of a crime.”

But they dismissed those words as a a suggestion and insisted that Leorio was not safe. He tried to wriggle free of the iron grip, yet the more he struggled, the tighter Kurapika's fingers dug down. And no matter how much Leorio tried to throw all his weight in the opposite direction, the small android dragged him closer and closer to the front door. “Kurapika, stop it, you're hurting me!”

That _did_ stop them. Kurapika let go so suddenly that Leorio stumbled and landed on his ass. When they faced him, their mechanical eyes lit up with a scarlet glow.

“I—hurt—you?”

The question sounded as if someone had chopped up an old cassette tape and glued the words back together in a new order.

“It's fine. It's fine, now that you let go.”

The scarlet glow disappeared.

Gon called from the kitchen, saying that they really shouldn't worry about the mess, he was going to clean it up any second and indeed, the tap running could be heard soon after.

“Now,” Leorio began, and was surprised as Kurapika offered him a hand to pull himself back up, (they were strong, those hands, of course they were,) “if you could explain to me why you're so hell-bent on getting the police involved?”

“I don't understand,” they replied.

Leorio sighed, thinking _'me neither, buddy'_ and before Kurapika could ask him to rephrase, he tried again: “Why do you want to bring me to the police?”

“I must protect you. I cannot let the master come to harm. If Mito-san has the intention to kill you, you need to be moved to a safe place and we must alert the authorities of her lethal intent.”

“If... oh my _god_. Nononono, Kurapika, no. I didn't mean it like _that_ , I- you remember how I sometimes say things that have a different meaning than the literal one?”

“You mentioned this sort of code speak in former conversations, yes.”

He gave them a lopsided, scrutinizing frown. “Often, when people mess something up, they exaggerate and yell 'ugh, dammit so-and-so is going to kill me!' but what they mean is that this person is going to get very upset. You get that?”

“I do. Master, why are you talking like a cartoon villain when you try to indicate direct speech? I am able to pick up the clues from your speech pattern.”

Leorio made a dismissive motion at Kurapika. “Dramatic effect. Now, try to think of Mito. Does she seem like a violent person to you?”

They paused, lowering their glance, then searching for Leorio's eyes when they found their answer. “No. There is not a single situation that has caused her to respond in a violent manner yet.”

“Exactly. Mito is a good person. Now, if she gets mad, there's going to be a lot of yelling, and maybe she'll cry about how we disappoint her so. That's really bad, because Mito deserves to have people around who don't make her cry. You need to understand that Gon and I are like her children and she loves us and she would never, ever, hurt us. So don't worry. We're safe here.”

Kurapika fell silent for a while, standing eerily still... Leorio waved a hand before their face.

“I am evaluating. May I recommend you something, master?”

“Sure.”

“I am suggesting to shut me down until you gathered the necessary means for a recalibration.”

“What? Why?”

“In my current state I am a hazard to your safety. I cannot touch items without breaking them and I cannot touch you without causing harm. I cannot perform the task I was built for, therefore, as I am now, I serve no purpose. You lose nothing from shutting me down. It is the best solution.”

“No.” Leorio seized Kurapika by the shoulders and squeezed them affirmatively, almost surprised to find his fingers slip. He never forgot that Kurapika was not human, that the limbs underneath Leorio's old preppy teenage clothes were made of unyielding metal, but sometimes that fact drifted a bit far from his conscious mind and it must have been because of that, that he found himself so averse to the idea of turning off the android. “Kurapika, listen. Sometimes, humans hurt each other. It's inevitable. But you don't go around and just shut away humans because they hurt someone, right? Because sometimes they never meant to hurt others or they didn't understand what they did: one needs to understand the intentions of that person first before you can judge them. And give them the opportunity to make up for what they did. What I'm saying is I'm not going to punish you for doing something that you can't help.”

“Your logic is faulted, master. I am not a human; I am a tool. Tools that don't serve their purpose should not be used until they are fixed.”

That didn't sound right to Leorio at all, but he didn't have the means to argue with Kurapika on that point and it was impossible to reason with them on the foundation of feelings alone. “Well, you have other functions! Functions that still work perfectly fine! You're a database, too, right, so why don't you go sit down in the living room and acquire some nice data by reading a book, huh?”

“Wouldn't it be quicker if you gave me access to your computer?”

“Yes, but handling a book requires more care and I want you to practice turning the pages without ripping them. Start as gentle as you can.”

“Gentle”, Kurapika repeated as flatly as ever. “I know about gentleness.” They walked past him, leaving Leorio scrambling for the meaning of those words.

 

“Wow, that looks nasty. How did you get that?”

Leorio suppressed the urge to roll down the sleeves of his grease-stained work-shirt and cover up the bruise that had bloomed on his wrist like a purple flower. Instead, he bared his teeth and screwed, screwed, screwed pieces of scrap together. He hesitated just long enough with his answer to make it seem natural. “I've been donating blood,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Zepile chortled with laughter. “Well, you can be glad it's not the entire arm this time, eh?”

Kurapika sat in the back of the work shop, laying a _patience_ and didn't pipe up, although they listened to the conversation while their visual input was focused on the cards. Leorio had been donating blood, this was a fact. A fact completely unrelated to how he got the bruise on his wrist, but since his lie based on implications, it would pass the android's rational mind unnoticed and therefore Kurapika couldn't rat him out.

The cause of this bruise was his business and he didn't want anyone else's judgmental opinions all over Kurapika, because Kurapika was _his_ business too, his responsibility.

Kurapika listened as the conversation became more playful.

Zepile called Leorio a fragile little bird.

Leorio called Zepile an asshole.

In Kurapika's database, Zepile was listed as Leorio's

**friend:** noun _, A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations_ (definition by Oxford Dictionary)

but also as

**friend:** noun, _someone who keeps nicking your stuff but you really don't mind_ (definition by Leorio)

and Kurapika was well aware that the exchange of nicknames or terms of endearment was common among friends and family members. 'Asshole' did not qualify as a nickname, since it was an insult, but the entirely positive reaction that Zepile showed when being confronted with this word led to only one conclusion: that insults were valid terms of endearment.

Kurapika, a tool, had no right or need for terms of endearment, but they stored away this piece of information among the data they gathered about human interactions for future use.


End file.
